


A terrible situation! to be touched

by Anonymous



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, D/s undertones, Gen, M/M, building in the direction of valjean/javert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 10:05:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13611096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When he had so unexpectedly encountered Jean Valjean on the banks of the Seine, there had been in him something of the wolf which regains his grip on his prey, and of the dog who finds his master again.Valjean and Javert meet on the banks of the Seine.





	A terrible situation! to be touched

It was right to fall to his knees, Valjean thought, overcome as he gazed at the stars.  He had no words, even in the privacy of his skull.  He was worn down to action.  He trailed a hand into the water of the river; the cold of the water brought him such relief that he was lost in the sensation for a moment.  Coming to himself, he reached to the young man's face, trailing water across his brow.  Valjean could just feel breath against his hand.  The call of the stars to worship, for a moment, was his most urgent duty.  Yet a man who rests near the end of a grueling task will find it difficult to resume, and Valjean knew he must take up his burden again soon.  Only a few hours remained before dawn.   His gratefulness was mingled still with an angry weariness.  Thank God; and yet, his task was not yet done.    
  
It was then, perceiving a presence behind him, that he turned and saw the tall and terrible figure blacking out the stars behind him.  Javert.  
  
Even the condemned, knowing he is to die at dawn, may feel justly affronted if his executioner comes at midnight.  Valjean had prepared himself to surrender the life he had made, and the daughter he had loved.  At the barricades, freeing Javert, he had committed himself to his path.  He had marched through the hell of the sewer bearing the architect of his loneliness to safety.  Yet now more was demanded, even as he knelt beside his burden.       
  
"Who are you?"    
  
What a question!  Valjean was well-practiced in the art of maintaining silence in the face of great pain or provocation.  Even so, he had to bite back a laugh that would not have been out of place in the bagne, where his laugh came seldom and terrible.  Who is Jean Valjean?  An elusive enough answer for Valjean himself, but for Javert to demand it?  To Javert, he had been a prisoner, a superior, a quarry, a savior.    
  
"I," he answered simply.    
  
"Who is 'I'?"  
  
"Jean Valjean."

 

* * *

  
Javert's curt and impatient reply had been out of his mouth before he took time to consider.  As soon as he heard the rejoinder, 'Jean Valjean,' he felt torn between warring reactions: both _it cannot be_ and _of course, naturally_.    
  
Javert prided himself on his self-control; but in truth, as an adult he had rarely felt the kind of strong emotion that tempts a person to dramatic action.  It takes little self-control to resist weak temptation.  At hearing 'Jean Valjean,' the ludicrous urge to fall to his knees suddenly flooded him, paired with a conflicting impulse to pounce like a tiger and destroy his foe.  Gripping his cudgel in his teeth, he nearly fell foward, seizing Valjean's shoulders with his hands like gloved talons.  He glared into Valjean's face, dirtied with blood and filth and obscured by darkness, but still recognizable to one who had spent many years committing it to memory.    
  
Their faces almost touched.    
  
Valjean did not move under his hands.  He gazed up steadily, silently, allowing himself to be fully seen and recognized.    
  
Javert was aware, with some part of himself, that Valjean appeared monstrous.  He was covered with filth, emerging from the haunt of a known murderer, and resting near a recent corpse.  There was some question, unanswered, in Javert's mind as to why he would put his cudgel in his mouth to approach this monster with his hands.  Before that name, Jean Valjean, reached him, he had a tight grip on his weapon; after it, he not only let go of it but obstructed his own voice with it.  If the convict were to attack, as all appearances seemed to indicate he already had...  
   
But the name spoken, Jean Valjean, cancelled these thoughts, leaving a kind of internal silence Javert had seldom experienced in life.    
  
Javert had few memories from his youth of that blessed relief that follows the realization that an unrecognized stranger is in fact familiar, and safe, and good.  Growing up in the prisons had fostered his vigilance and suspicion; his sense of peace had been neglected.  Even while feeling the slight shift of powerful muscles, jumping with strain, beneath his grip, Javert knew as if it had been told him in a celestial tongue: Valjean was safe.  This was an unacceptable thought for Javert, and so he shrouded it with mistranslations: Valjean knew his place.  Valjean had surrendered.  Valjean was on his knees, letting himself be handled.     
  
Valjean spoke, as if divining his thought.  "Inspector Javert, you have me in your power,"  His voice was hoarse and weary, but there was a calm dignity in it that put Javert's back up.  "Moreover, I have regarded myself as your prisoner ever since this morning."  
  
Since this morning, the devil says, thought Javert.  Why not before?  He was just as much a fugitive last night.  What had changed since then?  _Well! Everything,_ a voice inside him said, with something approaching humor-- or mania.  His frown deepened.  
  
His own word _just_ reverberated in him, a sacred edict.  _You lead me to my execution; very well, that is just._   Javert had proclaimed it so himself, in the room of the dead where the rebels had kept him tied.  Though there had been an edge to it, he had not wholly lied to speak it.  To fail in his watch and die at the hands of a criminal, that was sensible; that was to be the end of his life from its beginning.  But to be spared, by a convict and a rebel; to be given direction as to how to pursue him; to be shooed away like a stray when he attempted to refuse the manipulation!  Ordinarily Javert feasted on the impotent rages, pleas, and cries of a criminal surrendering in the face of superior force, intelligence, and righteousness; it was one of the few joys he allowed himself.  But to hear this surrender, one that he had long yearned for, given in that voice--  
  
Disoriented after his release, Javert had returned to his duty with a speed that confused his colleagues.  He was trying to plant his feet on solid ground.  Internal order reasserted itself temporarily through the organization of the manhunt, the quiet duty of watching, the cold clear air of the night.  But then Jean Valjean, so eager to be rid of him before, crawled from the earth under his feet with a corpse, hounding him still with soft, submissive words.  Instead of solid ground, he found the listing, wet deck of a ship in a storm.  He perceived it would not take much to push him overboard; indeed, he realized he may be hurtling for the water regardless of anyone's malicious interference.    
  
Jean Valjean was still speaking.  Javert scarcely processed the words.    
  
"I did not give you my address with any intention of escaping from you.  Take me.  Only grant me one favor."  
  
Out of control of his circumstances, he asserted it over himself.  He straightened, looking down at his prisoner.  He took hold of his cudgel firmly in his hand, ready to use.  He opened his mouth to speak-- but no words of authority came.    
  
His strengths lay in preparation; he had not prepared for this.    
  
"What are you doing here?  And who is this man?" he murmured instead.  The _you_ escaped him without consideration.  He had never needed to school himself to remember a convict's inferiority before.  It had been automatic, from which he concluded that it was natural.  It was not so now.    
  
"It is regarding him I must ask of you a favor, monsieur.  Dispose of me as you see fit; but first help me to carry him home.  That is all I ask of you."  
  
_As you see fit,_ Javert thought furiously, as if it were his own choice!  As if this were some personal vendetta!  They were both creatures of the law, were they not?  The law was certain, and each man was equally bound to his place under it.  What right did Valjean to ask Javert to make a _choice_ , to do what he saw fit?    
  
None of the objections sounding incredulously in Javert's skull made their way past his lips.  Instead, he crouched down to inspect the corpse, squeezing his wrist in search of a pulse.  He recognized the insurgent.  The body was cold.  Javert felt nothing.    
  
"The boy is wounded--"  
  
"The man is dead," Javert corrected.     
  
"No. Not yet."  Valjean's voice rang with weary certainty, enough to make Javert doubt the evidence of his own senses. 

He blinked at Valjean, and at the corpse.  He considered the sewer grate, the time, and the distance, and tried to fathom the purpose of the risk.  

"Please, monsieur.  I must see him home.  It is all I ask, and then you may do as you like with me."

Javert was not accustomed to having more than one thought to choose from.  He was no fool, but his thoughts were ordinarily systematic; they proceeded, orderly, from preparation to action to evaluation to preparation.  He was prepared to meet a criminal, at any time, and he had a script playing already, almost joyfully, in his mind.  
  
_All he asks is to go about his business, but otherwise he will deign to be arrested?  Ha!  The convict on his knees drives a hard bargain with the Inspector.  He tries to trick me into aiding him in his purpose, after I come upon him, armed, ready, in full knowledge of his crimes?  His unearned freedom has certainly given him gall.  He will be taught his place again._  
  
But even as these thoughts played out within him, it was as if Javert were listening to that man blathering at a party, without paying much attention.  In front of his eyes were the barricade, the cellar, the street, and the gun.  He had no way to square these with his thinking.  Jean Valjean offered him one.  This is all he asks in exchange, is a favor.  Then he will release me from his power, and then I may arrest him.  The absurdity of this statement was not lost on him; but in moments of great difficulty all people may accept absurdity in order to survive.  
  
But Javert knew, with the certainty that had propelled him through his career like a solemn gravity, that it was not sufficient.  To think he would ever let Valjean decide what would balance the scales!  Valjean had never been a creature of justice.  Javert beheld a terrible wilderness before him, unsure of his path.  To treat Valjean as he would have done the day before his capture, as he would treat any convict-- there was an atrocity in it.  But if he admitted any debt to Valjean, he must pay the full account.  One act of lenience would not suffice.  God only knew what would.  
  
A man unaccustomed to physical work, who attempts some strenuous task, will not go long before his body forces him to rest.  Javert's conscience, suddenly tasked with teasing apart a moral conundrum without the simplicity of the law to fall back on, simply could do no more.  Thankfully, Valjean's voice had enough of surrender to calm the wolf within him, and enough of Madeline in it yet to settle the dog.  The rest of the problem would have to wait.  For now, there was only the next task.  A favor.  A cab to carry the corpse to its father.  A problem he could address.  Beyond-- nothing visible.  
  
Valjean knelt silently, gazing upwards at his face with the grim serenity of a man at prayer, awaiting judgment.  It seemed to Javert that although Valjean met his eyes, he looked through him, towards some higher authority.  A chill crossed the back of Javert's neck, a childish anxiety that if he turned, he would see some grim specter there, looming over him as he did over Valjean.   
  
"You will give me the address," Javert snapped roughly.  It sounded like a command, and Valjean bowed his head obediently.  Javert felt a small piece of the satisfaction he should have felt at the sight, and clung to it, rejecting the creeping conviction that in the guise of issuing a command, he had offered his surrender. 

**Author's Note:**

> Several pieces of dialogue are from Hugo. 
> 
> I found this forgotten in a folder, so I cut it off at an ok ending so I could post it. I would appreciate feedback or comments; I have never shared my writing much and it's a bit nervewracking, but I have appreciated others' work so much I thought I may as well share my own. If anyone has any interest in a continuation of this, please say so-- it was going in a Javert Lives direction.


End file.
